The July 2024 Platform Leaders virtual event brought together practitioners, academics and policy makers from around the world for fascinating discussions on generative AI, the growing app economy and new regulations.
Just when it seems the digital landscape couldn’t possibly evolve any more rapidly, the arrival of generative AI is creating new paradigms and possibilities.
At the most recent Platform Leaders event, polling showed astonishing growth in the uptake of this technology among event participants. 84% of them now regularly turn to generative AI tools for work or personal use (compared to 47% only a year ago).
Generative AI
Arka Dhar, ex-Head of Human Data at OpenAI, joined us for a fireside chat with Laure Claire Reillier, COO of Launchworks & Co. As an early employee of OpenAI, Arka worked closely alongside Sam Altman and his team to build and train ChatGPT models. Arka shared with us his experience building GenAI models and helping organisations around the world to harness new AI tools. With an increasing number of organisations starting to deploy these technologies, Arka suggests taking a bottom-up approach to change management and focusing on specific use cases. We also discussed the increasing importance of the ethical considerations of GenAI, and Arka advocated for inclusive growth that distributes the benefits of AI, both socially and globally.
Arka’s testimony resonated with our own experience at Launchworks & Co. We find that, to have a real impact, training leadership teams needs to be followed by the development of focused initiatives to harness GenAI tools, enhance the capabilities of key personnel and develop specific use cases targeted at strategic workflows.
As Benoit Reillier, CEO of Launchworks & Co, noted in his closing remarks: ‘We are going beyond the experimentation stage and we’re entering the industrialisation stage [with generative AI].’ The initial fervour and, perhaps in some cases, hesitation, around AI is settling and we’re now seeing more widespread and consistent adoption. ‘Pandora’s box is now definitely open,’ he added.
Evolution of the app economy and app stores
Our digital lives increasingly revolve around apps, and we discover, choose, purchase, download and install them via app stores. As platforms, these app stores play a crucial role, attracting developers and users, matching them, connecting them and facilitating their transactions.
Following recent EU regulations designed to favour competition and innovation, the app economy is shifting towards more open ecosystems. In practice, this means that new app stores will be available on a wider range of platforms. Our panel of experts, which included Ben McOwen Wilson, MD EMEA Google Play, and Paulo Trezentos, Co-Founder and CEO of alternative app store Aptoide, explored significant questions about trust, governance and safety that these regulatory changes raise, as well as the importance of differentiating themselves in an increasingly crowded market.
While Google Play, Google’s app store, has been managed as a relatively open ecosystem for years, Apple is notorious for its closed ecosystem approach. This raises questions about how the iOS ecosystem will adapt to the new EU legislations and the extent to which alternative app stores like Aptoide will be able to thrive within the Apple ecosystem in the same way they have within Google’s Android.
The competitive landscape is still evolving, and it will be interesting to see how diverging regulatory approaches in Europe and the US influence our experiences of digital platforms like iOS and Android, as well as which path the UK will choose to follow.
Emerging regulations: tough time to be a regulator
The European Commission is already investigating reported breaches of its new legislation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA). The UK has also passed legislation in the form of the DMCC (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill), so it can now mimic aspects of the DMA if it wishes.
With ink on these new regulations barely dry, regulators and competition authorities have started to look closely at AI. The Consumer Market Authority in the UK did some very interesting work on foundation models, while the French Authority also recently published an opinion, and in particular shared its concern about the dominant role of NVIDIA in the upstream supply of AI chips and systems. The Italian competition authority has been similarly very active on these topics.
At this Platform Leaders event, we heard from senior representatives from both the French and Italian competition authorities who drew parallels between past antitrust enforcement in digital markets and the current challenges of regulating AI. Both emphasised the vital need for international collaboration and an agile, coordinated response to the complex AI market.
Closing Remarks from Benoit Reillier
In his closing remarks, Benoit Reillier, CEO of Launchworks & Co and Platform Leaders Co-Chair, noted how ‘the interplay between competition, regulation, innovation is always interesting. It’s going to be even more the case with technologies like AI.’
On one hand, the AI market is displaying many of the characteristics of a very competitive market in terms of investment, market entrants and diversity. For example, the AI market has seen hundreds of billions in investment against just a few in revenues, and there are already hundreds of models on the market with a variety of approaches, ranging from open source to more closed. On the other hand regulators seem very keen to intervene and are already worried that some of the larger firms may secure dominant positions that would enable them to foreclose parts of the market, with potentially suboptimal outcomes.
Governments will need to strike the right balance for the full benefits of AI to materialise. Given the potential impact of AI across sectors, including health, education and government, restrictive regulations (or knee-jerk government reactions) could have significant consequences at a time when an increasing number of businesses and individuals are relying on these tools in their daily lives.
Benoit concludes: ‘There’s a tension. What is going to be interesting to look at is the extent to which some of these regulations may restrict access to AI in some jurisdictions and what the impact this has on the economy.’
Stay tuned for further insights
The growing Platform Leaders community offers a crucial forum to explore defining questions on technology, innovation, regulation and strategy. There are more in-depth insights, articles and videos from our discussions on generative AI, the app economy and regulation on the Platform Leaders website.
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